Posts by Aaron Edgell

The things which most die-hard Friday the 13th fans dislike about Jason Goes to Hell are the things which I believe make it one of the best later entries in the series. Namely, its the movie's departure from the tried and true Crystal Lake formula that makes it interesting and actually engaging. Of course the plot, which we'll get to in a minute, is a little more involved than that of some of the previous films, but Jason Goes to Hell is full of little details that should have been part of the series for a long time and it even attempts to explain Jason's darn near immortal status.(read more...)

Detective Cameron: Well girls, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is, your dates are here.

Girl: What’s the bad news?

Detective Cameron: They’re dead.

This one exchange conveys the entire tone and mindset of Night of the Creeps. Wisconsin doesn’t have this much cheese and Crystal Lake doesn’t have this much camp and rarely is a horror comedy as much fun to watch as this movie is.

The movie opens onboard an alien spaceship. The ETs are fighting an unseen enemy and finally manage to jettison their foes from the craft. The unwanted passengers hurtle into space and eventually land on Earth in the late 1950s.(read more...)

I knew this day would come. After countless hours wasted on drek like Cthulhu Mansion and Curse of the Blue Lights, I have finally found a film based on the works of H. P. Lovecraft that is both faithful to the source material and also very entertaining and genuinely creepy at times.(read more...)

Every sub-genre in horror has had its "golden years". For every type of horror movie, there has been one time, be it an entire decade or just a couple of years, when it was at its peak of both quality and popularity. In the 1980s, the slasher was definitely number one. Not only were these movies extremely popular, they were also very well made. Sure, like with anything else, there are a fair share of duds, but not nearly as many as you'd think after listening to critics and even some horror fans bash this type of film. There are some truly great slashers around and you would be doing yourself a disservice as a fright film fan to dismiss them without a look.(read more...)

Well, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter wasn’t the worst entry in the series by a long shot and, in my opinion, it would have been a great place to end the series. Unfortunately, The Final Chapter wasn’t the last word and even for a big Friday fan like me, A New Beginning is a tough movie to love. It isn’t impossible to enjoy this movie and there are some funny over-the-top characters here that are fun to watch, but everything just doesn’t click. All the elements that make up a Friday the 13th movie are here, in one form or another. You’ve got your psycho in a hockey mask, some horny teens, colorful locals, and the largest body count in the series to date.(read more...)

The 1957 Hammer masterpiece of suspense and building tension The Abominable Snowman (AKA The Snow Creature and The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas) is a perfect example of why Hammer is so highly regarded and why Peter Cushing is a legend.(read more...)

After two excellent predecessors, loyal Friday the 13th fans were raving for another romp in the woods with Jason when this movie came out in 1983 (and it was even going to be in 3D!). I know that I for one was plotting and scheming to find a way into a theater to see it. After several thwarted attempts, I eventually did. The question is, was it all we thought it would be? Was I disappointed? No, I wasn't, but I was 11 and had even lower viewing standards than I do now and they still aren't that high. Even with the excitement of seeing a new Friday the 13th movie, I felt, even then, that something was just not the same. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a great movie at the time, but it just didn't have the same punch as the first 2.(read more...)

I haven't seen a good review of this movie, and I really don't know why. Perhaps my own nostalgia for the first Blob movie has clouded my objectivity, but I think that Beware! The Blob (AKA Son of Blob) is a fun and entertaining little B-movie that doesn't get any respect and it is surely more maligned than it deserves.(read more...)

This very low budget German zombie movie, although not a Troma movie, combines elements of my two favorite Troma videos. It takes the cheese and over the top gore of Redneck Zombies and pairs it with the side-splitting dubbing style of Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters. What results is a fun, cheap, intensely gory and sophomorically hilarious zombie romp.(read more...)

This movie can be viewed in two different lights. The first, and more unflattering, is that of a straight zombie flick, shot on a shoe-string budget by some basically talented people with big ideas and a love for horror who haven't completely pulled off the movie they were trying to make. On the other hand, if you have seen the films official web site and watched the behind-the-scenes documentary The Dead Next Door: 15 Years in 15 Minutes, or read any of the number of articles about it, you will probably have a slightly greater appreciation for the movie and be a little more willing to cut it some slack. Does it deserve our willingness to be "grade it on a curve" or should "the most expensive movie ever shot on Super-8" be forced to stand on its own merits?(read more...)